I wanted to flag this Guardian report because, as League regulars will remember, it gets to the heart of what became a rather contentious debate ’round here during the London riots: Were the rioters self-consciously political actors or not?
Elias Isquith
Elias Isquith is a freelance journalist and blogger. He considers Bob Dylan and Walter Sobchak to be the two great Jewish thinkers of our time; he thinks Kafka was half-right when he said there was hope, "but not for us"; and he can be reached through the twitter via @eliasisquith or via email. The opinions he expresses on the blog and throughout the interwebs are exclusively his own.
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Oh, that was a good thread.Report
Yes but its The Guardian. British papers (much more so than American) write to a very specific cross-section of their potential audience and for the Guardian’s readership riots are always due to police brutality, racism and poverty. You could write you the Daily Mail version of the story, concluding pretty much the opposite, regardless of the actual events just as easily.Report
Actually, Bill99, the NYT and my LATimes are indistinguishable from the Guardian, although they take some minimal pains to hide it.
Mr. Isquith seems upset at the Wapo, though, which means I may have to start reading it.Report
Not a paper I’m familiar with, I’ll admit. Though I imagine they’ll have less cricket coverage…Report
“The police is the biggest gang out there.”
A statement I have some sympathy with, as it is, in a historical sense, literally and incontrovertibly true. The police got to be the police by being the biggest gang out there.
Something in the ensuing logic just doesn’t hold though. They’re the biggest gang out there? Great, I’ll bash someone else!Report
To be perfectly honest, if I were a rioter that just wanted to throw bricks through the windows of Pakistani shopkeepers (London for Londoners!) and, months later, someone came up and asked “why were you rioting?”, I’m pretty sure that I would say something like “I wanted to stand up to police brutality” instead of “friggin’ immigrants, man”.
Perhaps British people have more integrity than I, though, and would tell the truth to the Guardian if asked.Report
Perhaps British people have more integrity than I, though, and would tell the truth to the Guardian if asked.
I doubt it.
“friggin’ immigrants, man”.
Ah, now that’s what you’d tell The Daily Mail 😉Report